Saturday, November 30, 2013

“Do you have an Internal Complaints Committee at your
workplace as per the new law?”

(L-R) IG Vigilance Seema Agarwal, Vahidha Nizam of AITUC,

Advocate Sheila Jayaprakash, Prajnya Founder Dr Swarna Rajagopalan

and K Santhakumari of the Tamil Nadu Federation of Women Lawyers

at the training session held by Prajnya and TNFWA on 28/11/13

It’s
a question doing the rounds these days, whether on the news or the social
media, or even conversations among acquaintances. Recent cases of sexual
harassment or assault by employers on their employees have created a buzz
around a recently passed law – The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace
(Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013 – more commonly known as the
Workplace Sexual Harassment Act. Awareness is good, but a lot of the debate has
centred only around companies and established organisations. What about the
challenges faced in implementing the law in the unorganised sector? What about
domestic workers and construction labourers and agricultural workers? Where do
they sit in this scheme of things?

According
to the new law, any organisation with 10 or more employees is mandated to form
a committee to address complaints of harassment. For all other cases, every
district is mandated to form a ‘Local Complaints Committee’ to address the
complaints. In the unorganised sector, the main challenge is the nature of the
sector itself.

“There
are several problems with this model,” says Advocate Sheila Jayaprakash. “The
law talks about conducting an inquiry in keeping with the ‘service rules’. What
are the service rules in the unorganised sector? This is one aspect that hasn’t
been addressed. These rules must be framed for the law to be effective. And as
it stands now, I feel it has let down the unorganised sector and domestic
workers,” she says.

Some
believe that the very inclusion of the unorganised sector in the purview of the
law is something to be happy about. “The Draft Bill had exclusive excluded
domestic workers, but the final Act has included them. It’s a start, especially
when 93% of our workforce is in the unorganised sector,” says Vahidha Nizam of
the AITUC. “But there are other apprehensions,” she adds.

“Imagine
a beedi worker complaining against her employer to the local complaints
committee. The law says a complainant can seek a transfer: tell me, where does
she get a transfer to? And since the pool of employers in the sector is small
and well knit, the possibility of her getting another job is also slim. The job
security factor is a huge deterrent for women from filing complaints,
especially in the unorganised sector,” says Vahidha.

Another
issue that many have raised is with the provision for ‘conciliation’ or
‘settlement’. “This helps the offender, not the victim,” says Sheila
Jayaprakash. “This means a lot of pressure will be put on the victim.”

One
of the most contentious provisions of the Act that several people have spoken
out against is the punishment in case of ‘false or malicious complaints’. “This
is a sure deterrent for aggrieved women to speak out,” says K Santhakumari of
the Tamil Nadu Women Lawyers’ Federation. “In the least, we want the word
‘false’ to be removed from this provision. What if a woman is unable to prove
her case? How is it fair to punish her?”

But
even as the new law comes into force, the biggest challenge in the unorganised
sector remains creating awareness and changing the mindset of the society at
large. As Vahidha says, “We need a comprehensive campaign targeting both men
and women in order to tackle the issue at its root. Sexual harassment deters
the economic emancipation of women, and unless there is a change in mindset,
laws cannot help much.”